


Theta Sigma's Daughter

by B1nary_S0lo



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Aging, Children, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gallifrey, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Origin Story, Parent-Child Relationship, Pre-Episode: An Unearthly Child, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 04:16:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4045597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B1nary_S0lo/pseuds/B1nary_S0lo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she's small, her father is a constant presence. But, sometimes, she catches him staring up at the orange skies, a faraway look in his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Far Away

**Author's Note:**

> I found this story floating around on my hard drive recently and realized that there's really no reason not to post it. The story explores what the First Doctor's relationship with his immediate family might have been like prior to leaving Gallifrey, focusing in particular on his relationship with his oldest daughter-Susan's mother. The chapters start very short but get increasingly longer as the work progresses. Enjoy!

When she’s small he is a constant presence—giving her baby sister rides on his shoulders, tickling her younger brother, holding all three children’s hands in a chain as they run through fields of red grass. Their mother works most of the day, so he does the daily work of caring for Zeta, Iota and Anfisa. Zeta comes inside to find him scribbling frantic notes in his study, or hurriedly making concoctions for dinner. At bedtime he tells the best stories, ones he makes up out of his head, though he is also fantastic at reading aloud from story books. She, Io and Anfi listen with wide eyes until Mother comes in, gives them all kisses, lingering a bit longer on Father, and tells them it’s time for bed. She loves her mother, but her father is bigger than life, always moving, always up to something. But, sometimes, she catches him staring up at the orange skies, a faraway look in his eyes. At this point, she always walks over and gently tugs on his sleeve, pulling him back into reality, back into her family.


	2. Change

She enters the Academy when she is eight years old. In a couple of years her brother joins her, and in a few more years, her sister as well. It is when all the children are at school that Father begins to change. When they’re home for the school holidays, he is practically manic with joy, rushing to-and-fro, offering to take them on outings, give them presents. Zeta is caught up in his infectious excitement, but it fills her with a sense of unease as well. She learns later that when they’re at school, he spends most of his time in his study with the door shut, even though he doesn’t seem to be working on anything.

When Zeta is about fourteen, Father announces at dinner that he’s going back to school to earn the doctorate he never completed. For some reason Zeta’s nervous. She swallows a mouthful of food with some difficulty and tries to smile. He winks at her and her siblings. “Perhaps I’ll see you all between classes,” he says. Zeta hopes this is true, because his eyes are full of that faraway look that scares her.

She tries to find him at school. The Academy is a massive place, and she barely even sees her brother and sister, but she tries. Sometimes she stands at the edge of one of the elevated walkways and looks off into the distance. From this perch, she can see the Propulsion Trains gliding along the surface of the great glass dome, and luxury hover-vehicles zooming still higher. She sees thousands of students and professors in the colors of their Order, rushing from building to building. But hard as she looks, she never spots her father amongst the throng. She wants to see him hurrying to class in an ornate orange robe. She wants to see him bent on something close to home. But eventually she stops looking, too caught up in the rush of responsibility that comes with being a student to worry about anything else.


	3. Approval

Zeta meets Calidus close to the end of her school years. He’s a year-mate of hers, a tall young man with broad shoulders and a thick neck. His figure looks intimidating, but it doesn’t take long for her to notice his quiet voice, soft eyes, and gentle hands. They’re still quite young—both of them just over 100—but soon they are rarely seen apart.

They’ve been together for several months when she brings him round her parent’s house for supper. When Mother and Calidus are cleaning up, she and Father go out to the front of the cottage to take in the night air. The second sun is just beginning to set, giving the sky a red cast. It’s spring, so the flowers in the meadow release glowing white spores. Zeta leans on the railing, admiring the beauty of the view. Her father removes an Earth pipe from the pocket of his robe and lights it. She wrinkles her nose in distaste. He rarely imbibes, but she still doesn’t like it. Besides, he only tends to smoke when he’s agitated.

She watches him as he exhales a smoke ring. He hasn’t said much all evening, which is rare. She stands on tenterhooks. She wants to know what he thinks of Cal. He seems to sense her thought process. He taps the pipe on the railing to let loose some excess ash and stares off into the distance, a wry smile on his lips.

“I don’t know, dear,” he says, replacing the pipe in his pocket, “I’m not sure what you see in him. Don’t you think he’s a bit of a wet blanket?”

They both know who he is referring to. She clenches her jaw. Father either doesn’t see her expression, or ignores it. He wipes his hands together.

“It’s getting a bit nippy, isn’t it? Best head back inside.”

He turns and leaves. Zeta remains out front and tries to blink back the angry tears filling her eyes. She’s managed to check her emotions by the time her mother comes outside to get her, but she can’t bring herself to speak to her father for the rest of the evening. Later, Mother pats her on the cheek and tries to comfort her.

“You know how your father is,” Mother says. “He judges people a bit too quickly. I’m sure he’ll change his tune once he gets to know Calidus better. Just remember that he’s trying to protect you.”

Zeta forces a smile, but she still can’t help but think of Father’s words as a personal criticism of her. It doesn’t help that of late he’s been more critical than usual. When he found out that she plans to become an archivist, for example, he was bemused. An archivist? Where’s the romance in that?

“Why don’t you take a break from school and travel, like I did?” he had said. “My one regret is that I didn’t see more of the world before I settled down. Don’t be too quick to root yourself in one place, my girl.”

But Zeta is content with the career she’s chosen. She loves sorting through old documents, organizing them, learning what they are and why they matter. She has never left Gallifrey, and the idea of climbing into a time travel capsule and being hurled off into time and space makes her feel ill. She likes her life to be well-ordered and predictable, with a useful job and a reliable partner. It may not be a very exciting attitude, but as long as she feels comfortable that way, why do things have to change? Why does she have to be like her father?


	4. Cold

Father completes his doctorate soon after Zeta and Calidus’ wedding. They see less of him after this, because he’s been hired as a consultant for some type of government security project. Zeta doesn’t know anything about it. Not even her sister, Anfi, who works as a government clerk and spends most of her time at the Citadel of the Time Lords, has any idea what their father could be doing shut up in a council room all day.

Zeta’s life is busy as well. She gets a job in the archives room of the Great Prydonian Library. Calidus gets a job manufacturing time travel capsules. They purchase a mountain house with stately columns that quickly fills up with excess files from the library and spare parts from Cal’s home workshop. Soon the house is filled with children’s toys as well. They have two children—a little boy with sandy brown hair, and later, a dark-haired little girl with her grandfather’s eyes. Worried as she is about her father, Zeta can’t help but love him when he is with his grandchildren. She watches him lift his granddaughter high into the air, and he chuckle in that charming way, as if to say: “A grandfather? Me? I can hardly believe it!” Mother smiles and rests a hand on his shoulder. Zeta doesn’t think much of it at the time, but her mother’s hands are shaking.

The shock comes very shortly after this visit when she receives a panicked message from her father. He sends the message psychically, so she already knows something is wrong even without feeling his terror in her mind. Psychic messages have a limited travel range, and they are terrible at conveying specifics, but they’re quick. All Zeta manages to get from her father’s message is that her mother is in the hospital, and that she needs to come right away. Zeta tells him to wait for her. She scoops up the children, taking her son, a toddler, by the hand and strapping her infant daughter to her back. She sends another mind-to-mind message to her husband as she boards a capsule for long-distance travel. She grits her teeth as she feels the capsule de-materialize. She hates traveling this way, but speed is the imperative right now.

Father meets her in the waiting room.

“I don’t know what happened,” he says. Sweat is dripping from his forehead. He wipes it away with a sleeve of his robe. “We were talking, simply talking, and then she collapsed.”

Zeta takes his wrist and gently guides him to a chair. She notices, not for the first time, how old he’s beginning to look. His hair is almost gone on top and what’s left is nearly white. He’s walking with a stiff leg, too. He may need a cane if that keeps up.

She settles the children on the carpeted floor with some of their toys, then sits beside Father and looks around the grand white room. She’s never been to a hospital before. It’s never been necessary. Every ailment she’s ever had has been quickly cured by a pill or a potion. The fact that Mother needs to see a Healer at all is worrisome. The fact that it’s taking the Healers this long to treat her is even more so.

In time, a Healer comes out of Mother’s room and explains the situation to Zeta and her father. Mother has some sort of rapid-aging virus that Zeta has never heard of. She’s not responding to medications, and the virus has followed her even when she’s tried to regenerate. The Healers will let them know if anything changes. For now they’ll just have to wait.

Wait they do. Zeta finds a crumbling old book to pretend to read while her son plays with Rontgen blocks and her daughter chews on a stuffed toy. Calidus, Io and Anfi arrive about an hour later. Zeta fills them in on the details, since Father is busy pacing back-and-forth in front of Mother’s room, questioning the Healers on her condition whenever one comes out. A young Healer hurries over and tells them to “deal with” their father. He’s distracting them from their work. Io hurries over and tries to tempt Father with a walk around the hospital grounds. Father shakes off Io’s offer.

“I’m just fine, thank you very much. I’d rather wait here for my wife.”

He plants himself in a seat directly across from his wife’s room. His shoulders shake, but he won’t talk to Anfi when she comes over and tries to comfort him.

Zeta’s daughter cries. Calidus picks her up and bounces her on his knee, reaching out to take Zeta’s hand as he does so. She weaves her fingers through his and holds tight. She doesn’t want to think about what any of this means. It’s bad enough to see her father like this, but she doesn’t want to see her mother shriveled and broken, either. They’ve always been so strong, her parents.

A group of Healers re-appear to tell them the latest. They call Mother’s case a lost cause. They’ve never seen this virus before, and it’s progressing too quickly for them to develop a cure. Charming Anfi attempts to keep a cool head and reason with the healers. Have they really tried everything? Is there really _nothing_ to be done? The answer is an unequivocal no. Mother has gone through five regenerations in thirty minutes. At this rate she’ll kill herself even without the virus.

“She claims she’s ready to go,” the head Healer says, “You’d best go in and say your goodbyes while you still can.”

Zeta is the first of her siblings to enter the room. She leaves the children with her husband. It doesn’t seem fair, going in one-at-a-time like this, but it’s the Healers’ orders. Mother lies in the middle of an enormous bed that makes her look like a child. This is strange, though, because her face is so aged—sunken and folded. She is so unrecognizable that she may as well not have regenerated at all. Zeta sits beside the bed and smoothes her mother’s long white hair from her face. She is surprised by her own calm.

“Dear one,” Zeta murmurs, using her mother’s own term of endearment. “Dear, is there anything I can do for you?”

Mother looks up at her. Zeta tries to focus in on her eyes. Perhaps she is lying to herself, but when she looks at her mother’s eyes she can still imagine they look the same as they once did. Mother opens her mouth and tries to speak. Her voice is hoarse, each of her words labored, but it seems she is still lucid.

“Take care of your father,” she says, “I don’t think he can get by all on his own.”

Zeta nods, though she’s not sure her mother can see it. She leans forward and whispers.

“Of course.”

 “I love you so much,” the aged woman mutters. “But I’m so very tired…”

Zeta kisses her mother’s sunken cheek, blinking rapidly to keep herself in check. It’s time to go.

Zeta leaves her mother for the last time. Her eyes are still dry, but she finds herself needing physical contact. She takes the children back from Calidus and hugs them until her son squirms away. Then her husband sits down and wraps his arms around her shoulders. She leans into his chest and tries not to watch her brother enter the room, then leave. Her sister enter the room, then leave. Father goes in last, and he is holding his wife’s hand when the last shudder of life leaves her.

It is Gallifreyan custom to cremate a body after death. Zeta is nearly middle-aged, but she’s never been to a cremation before. Neither have her siblings. In a society where people live for thousands of years, they’re relatively infrequent. She knows this isn’t her father’s first funeral ceremony, though. He lost his own father before she was born, his brother even before that. He’s known a lot of loss for his 500 years. Even so, something in him seems broken at the memorial service. He floats around the hall in a daze, drink in hand. He only acknowledges the other mourners when someone comes over to talk to him. Even then, his answers are monosyllabic. Perhaps in keeping with her mother’s last wishes, Zeta goes over to her father and silently takes his hand. It’s cold, as if he, too, were among the dead. He doesn’t look at her, but he squeezes her hand back before leaving her so that he can be alone somewhere else.


	5. Meddling

Zeta worries about her father after the cremation. He returns to the cottage where she and her siblings grew up and lives alone. For a time, she and the rest of the family barely see him. Zeta tries to give him his space so that he can recover in his own time. After all, she may have lost her mother, but her father has lost his best and only friend. All of his school friends left the planet long ago, it seems.

Father’s reclusiveness does start to recede as the years pass. He attends Io’s wedding and is present for the births of his son’s children. He doesn’t neglect his older grandchildren, either, and visits Zeta and Calidus’ household regularly. He is particularly close to their daughter, who goes by Su. While their son, Felic, is serious and dutiful, already the model Time Lord, Su is a handful. When she’s not playing detailed, often destructive imaginary games, she’s daydreaming. She takes after her grandfather, that’s the problem. When he comes to visit the two often sit in a corner by themselves, lost in their own world.

Father may be spending plenty of time with his family, but he is also growing increasingly secretive. He won’t talk about himself, and he rarely spends time at his home anymore. He seems to have thrown himself into his work at the citadel—work that Zeta and her siblings still know nothing about. When he’s not working, he can generally be found at his son’s house. Io and his wife have opened a little shop in the suburbs of the capitol, and Father seems to feel comfortable there.

“What does he do when he visits you?” Zeta asks her brother one day. He and Anfi are over for a visit. “How does he seem?”

Io sighs thoughtfully and re-adjusts his infant son in his arms. His older children, a twin boy and girl, are off with Su, since Felic is at the Academy. The adults can hear the shouts and laughs of the children’s play coming from the other room.

“It’s strange,” Io says. “He shifts between being social and secretive.  Half the time he’s out in the shop, swapping stories with the customers. The other half he’s shut up in a little room at the back, tinkering with machinery and drawing up diagrams. He gets angry if I ask him what it’s all about.” He turns to his sister. “Anfi, you’ve seen him over at the citadel, haven’t you?”

Anfi, seated in a plush chair, bites her lip—a sign that she’s troubled. She’s recently been made a Junior Cardinal, and wears a bronze necklace to mark her rank.

“I see him coming out of meetings that I know are top-secret,” she says, fiddling with her necklace. “He’s been meeting with some Cardinals who are very hawkish—don’t trust them at all, but I’ve no idea what he could be up to. I know I’m concerned.”

“We’re all concerned,” Zeta says. “But what can we do? Father is a grown man. We can hardly expect to control him.”

“I don’t care to try,” Io mutters. The baby in his arms begins to squirm. Anfi twists a curl of her hair around one finger.

“It’s true that we can’t control him,” Anfi says. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t influence him.”

She releases the curl. It springs back into place.

For a while after that, Zeta, Io and Anfi make helpful suggestions to Father whenever they happen to see him. He’s getting old. Maybe he should lose some weight.  He seems depressed. Why doesn’t he take a class at the Academy, just for fun? He might meet someone there, if he knows what they mean. He dismisses these suggestions with characteristic scorn, but he grows particularly angry when Anfi suggests he consider regenerating.

“Don’t be ridiculous, child,” he says, snapping at his youngest daughter. “I’m in perfect health. Never felt better, in fact. The nerve of you children, meddling in my private affairs!”

 “I was just trying to help,” Anfi says, after he storms off. “He’s getting old, and he’s all alone. What if he falls or hurts himself when no one else is about? A new body would make his life easier.”

Zeta purses her lips, but doesn’t voice what’s on her mind. She doesn’t tell them that, after the way their mother died—diminished and changed—she can’t blame her father for his hesitation when it comes to regeneration. She knows how her siblings will react if she expresses this sympathy out loud. They’ll accuse her of being silly. They’ll remind her that regeneration is a natural part of a normal life, that it’s nothing to make a fuss over. Change and get on with it, that’s the proper Time Lord attitude. Bodies are simply vessels, not objects to cling to like a child’s toy. Zeta knows all this in her head, but the fact that she can’t quite make her heart believe it fills her with unease.

“I agree with you,” Zeta replies cautiously, “but regeneration is an awfully big step to take, particularly the first time.”

Anfi and Io are silent for a moment, reacting to this.

“Maybe we are being a bit heavy-handed,” Io says quietly.

Anfi sighs.

“I suppose you’re right,” she says.  “Perhaps we should leave it be. At least, for now.”


	6. Type 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter strays a bit from TV canon in regard to how the Doctor got his TARDIS, since I wrote this story prior to the debut of "The Name of the Doctor" (Wow! it has been a long time). I may go back and change it someday, but for now I'll leave it as is.

Zeta, Io and Anfi agree to leave their father alone. Things in the family settle into a wary calm, though some of the topics the siblings planned to avoid still manage to be brought up at holidays and birthdays. In the face of this peacefulness, Zeta begins to relax. Father continues to keep to himself, but no one hears much about him. Zeta figures that no news, in this case, is good news. Maybe she and the others were worrying about Father needlessly. Maybe it’s time for all of them to move on from suspicion, doubt, and grief.

One night, Zeta comes home later than usual. She’s grown used to arriving home to an empty house. Felic and Su are now both old enough to attend the Academy, and Calidus has always had a later work schedule than she. But tonight she comes in to find Calidus standing in the front hall, looking a bit shell-shocked. Zeta leans in to kiss her husband, then asks him what’s wrong.

“Your father was here,” he says. He picks nervously at his hair, which is beginning to thin at the top. Usually, Zeta would tell him to stop, but she’s curious and doesn’t want to change the subject.

“Really?” she says, hanging up her cloak. “Why didn’t he stay? I would have liked to see him.”

“Well, it’s funny,” Cal says. “He wasn’t here long. He wanted a look at some of the TARDIS models in my workshop.”

Everyone in their family has referred to time travel capsules as “TARDISes” ever since Su started calling them that when she was little. The name’s become a sort of family institution. Calidus has told his wife that even his co-workers have started using the anagram.

 “Why TARDIS models?” Zeta asks. “I don’t recall him having an interest in engineering.”

“Or in me,” Calidus says. Zeta quickly bends down to remove her slippers so that she doesn’t have to meet his eyes. She generally tries to avoid bringing up her father’s disdain for her husband, but Cal has a way of being disconcertingly frank. It helps that he doesn’t really care what other people think of him.

 “He says he might be back,” Cal continues, as if he hadn’t said anything odd, “Funny, thing, he really seemed to like that old Type 40. I mean, it’s a good ship, but the parking break sticks, and the dimensional control is faulty. I wouldn’t be surprised if that old bucket fell apart on a routine transmatter disintegration. Why, I remember one test…”

Zeta loses the thread of the conversation soon after this. She can never follow Calidus when he talks about work.

Zeta catches her father in the house a few days later. He’s leaving in a hurry, coming from the direction of Calidus’ workshop. He carries a metallic, off-white box under his arm, which Zeta knows is a TARDIS transport case. When he sees her, he pauses in surprise. She recognizes the expression on his face. It’s the same expression she often saw on the face of her brother when they were children, the expression he wore whenever he was caught doing something wrong.

“Zeta,” Father says. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I left work a bit early,” she says uncomfortably. She looks around the front room. “Is Calidus home?”

 “Oh, no,” her Father says, “He wasn’t here, so I let myself in. He’s letting me borrow an old TARDIS. Did he tell you?”

“No, but, what do you want with that old thing?”

He adjusts the box under his arm and manages a smile.

 “I’m fixing it up, you know. Thought it would be a bit of fun, a way to pass the time.”

“Oh. I see,” Zeta says. She slips her hand out of her pocket, than back in again. “I didn’t realize you did that sort of thing.”

“Well, my dear,” he says, not unkindly. “There are quite a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

He smiles again, but this time it is a warm grin, the sort she often saw when she was younger. He leans forward to give her a peck on the cheek.

“Goodbye, Zete,” he says, using her pet name. She feels another stab of foreboding, as if she might cry. He hasn’t called her that in years. She’s suddenly afraid to let him leave. She reaches for his hand.

“Is everything all right?” she says. “You’re sure you don’t want to stay?”

“No need to worry, my child,” he says. He pats her hand affectionately. “I’ll be going, now. Good night.”

When the door closes behind him, a little sob actually escapes her. She leans on the nearest chair, blinks rapidly, and takes several deep breaths. She’s being ridiculous. She’s a middle-aged, married career woman, the mother of two children, and she’s crying because her father won’t stay with her.


	7. Departure

That very night, Zeta calls her daughter. She contacts her using a Psycho-Sonic Amplifier, a small, stone-shaped device that amplifies and clarifies ones thoughts into a much more precise form of psychic communication. Zeta calls out to her daughter and immediately hears Su’s voice in her head, as clearly as if the girl were standing right there with her.

“Oh!” Su says. “Mother, you startled me. I’m doing my school work, I promise.”

Through the device, Su’s thoughts are so clear Zeta can almost imagine she sees her daughter’s expression—mouth in an O-shape, dark eyebrows raised. Su is fourteen now and pretty, with an open, guileless face. But Zeta isn’t fooled.

“No need to flatter me, dear,” she says. “I know you haven’t started your homework. What have you been doing? Reading travelogues again?”

Su’s voice is bashful. She sighs.

“Yes, Mother. I’m reading about the planet Earth. It sounds _beautiful_. Did you know they have a blue sky?”

 “Yes, I’ve read a thing or two about Earth,” Zeta says patiently, though she doesn’t mention that it sounds like a beastly, violent planet to her. “I’m actually calling about your grandfather, dear. Have you seen him lately?”

Su’s thoughts are confused. Zeta imagines her narrowing her brow.

“I see him at least a few times every week. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Zeta says.

She tries to keep her tone even. Su has been nervous and excitable ever since she entered the Academy, and Zeta doesn’t want to worry her unnecessarily.  Even now, Zeta doesn’t have to guess that Su is already fidgeting, starting to bite her thumbnail in that way she does when she’s anxious.

 “I’m just checking up on him,” Zeta continues. “You know he doesn’t look after himself.”

“I know,” Su says. “I try to make sure he does, though. I really do.”

“I know you do,” Zeta says with smile. “You always take good care of him.”

Su doesn’t reply right away, but Zeta can sense her pleasure at the compliment.

“About your question,” Su says. “He has been a bit funny, lately. I think he’s avoiding me, Mother.”

Zeta thinks about this carefully. Su can be oversensitive at times, but there’s no doubt that Father was behaving strangely today.

“Su,” she says. “Since he’s been funny, would you mind keeping an eye on him?”

 “You can’t mean I should _spy_ on him?” Su says, shocked.

Zeta sighs.

“Of course not. I just meant that, when you’re with him, make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish. He does overtax himself at times.”

 “I promise,” she says seriously.

“Good girl. Now back to your studies. You have exams coming.”

“I know. I love you, Mother.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

Zeta breaks the connection.

After that, Zeta doesn’t hear a peep from either her father or her daughter for a week. She wonders if she did the right thing, asking Su to keep an eye on Father. Su and Father are close, it’s true. If anyone knows her father’s moods and peculiarities, it’s that girl. But Su is also young, her exams are coming up, and she is easily distracted. Zeta considers calling one of them to see if they’re all right, but she talks herself out of it. Calling will only encourage her daughter’s procrastination, and her father never answers a call unless he _wants_ to talk. The man can be impossible to get in touch with. No, it’s better to just leave them alone. Hopefully, this lack of news means that Zeta’s suspicions are wrong.

It’s the end of the week when it happens. Zeta is deep in the archives, entering some new information on Raxacoricofallapatorius, when she hears a commotion coming from the back hallway. She sighs when she realizes that her colleagues must be slacking off work—again. She adjusts her thick outer-robe, because the archive rooms are cold, and saves her files. She doesn’t bother to remove the robe—this won’t take long—and heads into the hallway where she and the staff have their offices. The architecture here is much plainer than in the main part of the library, where oak-paneled walls and marble floors abound, but even here the black floor is decorated with regular star-shaped patterns made from crystal, and every door bears a nameplate in gold.

The staff certainly isn’t working. They’re gathered around a news projection, watching the glowing, life-size figures of two Reporters. Zeta is about to tell them off like a good boss when she hears one of the Reporters say a name she knows well:

“…Theta Sigma.”

She takes a small step forward. “Theta Sigma” is what everyone calls her father. It’s been his use-name since school. She moves closer to the projection so she can hear better. No one notices her approach.

“Yes,” says the Reporter, stoic face flickering over the projection. “This Time Lord, who goes by the name “Theta Sigma”, has stolen a highly dangerous, top-secret weapon from the Citadel itself. Chancellory Guards are pursuing him through the vortex at this very moment.”

The picture shifts to a female reporter with short brown hair.

“I am here at the citadel of the Time Lords,” she says, “where I have just been informed that the fugitive has fled this time zone in a Type 40 time travel capsule, in which the tracking mechanism has been disabled.”

Zeta feels her knees beginning to shake. The stars on the floor seem too bright and vivid, somehow unreal. Her robe is stiflingly hot, and she feels a thrill of dizziness.

The woman on the projection is listening to a voice Zeta can’t hear. Her face clears and she addresses the audience.

“Reports are coming in that that fugitive is not alone, but is accompanied by a child, a student at the Prydon Academy. We do not yet know the identity of this student, but—”

Zeta places a hand against the nearest wall. She steadies herself, and begins to make her way out of the room. She doesn’t know where she is going, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Nothing seems to matter. The reporter on the projection may not know the identity of that student, but Zeta knows it can only be one person.

She halts, shaking, forehead and hands pressed against the cool marble. The world spins. She clutches her chest. She has lost her father, just as she always feared she would, and worst of all, he’s taken her heart with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the story! I originally planned to continue it past this point, but have since decided to leave things off here, which is why the ending may seem a little abrupt. Hopefully it works okay, though.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
